1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to high speed communications and more particularly, but not exclusively, to a system and method for providing frequency/phase error tracking in a high-speed high-frequency communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Using conventional packet structures such as those used for WLANs for high-speed communications at high frequencies such as 60 GHz will not lead to an acceptable estimate of the residual frequency error. This is mainly because conventional packet structures contain a pre-amble sequence only at the beginning of the data. The use of such structures leads to performance that is adequate for lower frequency systems (e.g., 5 GHz) as the expected frequency error will not exceed 200 KHz, (40 ppm). However, using a similar structure will not lead to good performance for higher frequency systems (e.g., 60 GHz). To obtain good performance for higher frequency systems, (i.e., good frequency estimation accuracy), very long preambles are required at the beginning of the packet. Unfortunately, this results in a very inefficient system.
A need therefore exists for a system and method capable of tracking and compensating for high residual frequency error, phase noise and multipath in a high frequency communication system.